American Agriculturist 
THE FARM PAPER THAT PRINTS THE FARM NEWS 
“Agriculture is the Most Healthful, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man .”—Washington 
Volume 114 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. 
Established 1842 
For week Ending December 20, 1924 
Number 25 
U 
o7V[aryland, My Maryland” 
A Fireside Reflection 
I 
I hear the distant thunder hum, 
Mary lend I my Maryland! 
The Old Line bugle, fife and drum, 
Maryland ! my Maryland ! 
Come! to thine own heroic throng, 
That stalks with liberty along, 
And ring thy dauntless slogan song, 
Maryland! my Maryland! 
T SEEMS to me that only once every several 
years do I actually take a formal vacation. I 
By JARED VAN WAGENEN, Jr. 
land of cornfields and big stone barns with an 
“over hang” such as the Pennsylvania Dutchmen 
(and no one else.) builds. You are in no danger 
of exaggerating the beauty and fertility of this 
famous valley. And then there is old Frederick 
City, where Barbara Fritchie lived and died, 
confess that for a good many years agricultural Where is the boy of my generation, at le..ot, who 
work of one kind or another has taken me oft' in school has not declaimed and thrilled to those 
the farm at rather frequent intervals and some- lines, 
times for considerable periods, but, 
after all, trips of this kind are only 
part of the day’s work. I restrict the 
term “vacation” to those rare occa¬ 
sions when on pleasure bent I travel 
with my wife, go whither the spirit 
calls me and do not feel obliged to be 
in any particular place at any par¬ 
ticular moment. 
We—my wife and I—had talked 
about such a vacation for a good 
while, and at last in late September 
the time seemed ripe for another de¬ 
bauch of this kind. It was not much 
of a trip for these days when men 
run to and fro over the earth so easily. 
Briefly—we were gone eight days, 
drove the trusty old car 1276 miles, 
and, wonderful to tell, had neither a 
puncture nor a blow-out on the trip. 
Let me say in passing that it was a 
really ideal vacation, because, after 
all, we hurried. One hundred and 
fifty miles a day is at least fifty 
miles too much. 
We—I, at least— did not have much difficulty 
in deciding where to go. A good many years ago 
-—so long that I hate to say just how many, I 
spent a long three months in Farm Institute work 
in Maryland, and the following winter I returned 
for a month of special agricultural train work, 
and I have never forgotten or broken away from 
the lure of that pleasant old state. 
Maryland is a little Commonwealth—less than 
one-quarter of the land area of New York, but 
being of most irregular shape it sprawls over the 
map for surprising distances and it has an almost 
unbelievable extent of coast line. Naturally and 
in popular parlance it is divided into five geo¬ 
graphical divisions. There is the “Eastern Shore” 
•—the part of the State lying on the east and almost 
I have found these historic memories so interesting that I have 
almost forgotten to speak of its agriculture.. It is preeminently a one- 
crop region and that one crop is tobacco. So far as I can learn it has 
been the one great crop from the very beginning and its supremacy has 
never been disputed by any other type of agriculture. 
£ 
“Fair as the garden of the Lord 
To the eyes of the famished rebel horde.” 
“Up the street came the rebel tread, 
Stone Wall Jackson riding ahead.” 
“Halt!” The dust brown ranks stood fast. 
“Fire,” out blazed the rifle blast.” 
“Who touches a hair of yon gray head 
Dies like a dog.” “March on,” he said.” 
“All day long through Frederick street 
Sounded the tramp of marching feet.” 
“All day_ long the free flag tossed 
Over the heads of the rebel host.” 
“Ever its torn folds rose and fell 
On the loyal winds that loved it well.” 
Probably it is true that the pitiless light of his- 
completely cut off from the rest of the State by torical investigation leaves only a lttle foundation 
the wide and sometimes stormy waters of Chesa- for the legend, but, nevertheless, in a tiny walled 
peake Bay. The Eastern Shore is very level, in cemetery in the heart of the town, Barbara Fritchie 
parts fertile and highly developed agriculturally, lies buried, and surely Whittier’s poem has made 
Moreover, it is well supplied with transportation that worn old woman immortal and heroic for 
facilities. I have intimated that I am not especial¬ 
ly interested in a locality when it becomes too 
prosperous. Then there is “Old Maryland”— 
the country around Baltimore, but just why the 
ever. 
Then west of “Western Maryland”—like a 
long, narrow fragment, barely hung to the rest 
of the State, lie “The Mountains,” a region corn- 
name I do not know, for it is not the oldest part parable to our roughest Catskills, but rich in that 
of the State. Then there is “Western Maryland,” it contains some of the most valuable coal fields 
with Frederick County and Frederick City lying in the country. 
in the lap of the beautiful Monocacy Valley. This But, after all, while I have been in every corner 
.valley is so broad that you can hardly see across it of the State, my Maryland dreams and memories 
and its floor is a residual limestone soil. It is a have always clustered around the very definite 
region, “Southern Maryland,” meaning the penin¬ 
sula lying south and east of Washington and sep¬ 
arating the estuary of the Potomac from Chesa¬ 
peake Bay. This is the oldest part of the State, 
and the romance of history, both of the early set¬ 
tlements and of Civil War days, lies thick here¬ 
abouts. 
An early chronicler has set down the story 
the first settlement thus, “Hither in 1634 ca 
Leonard Calvert and twenty gentlemen and thre 
hundred laborers.” And all the twenty gentlemen^ 
were aristocratic English Catholics, and the three 
hundred laborers were largely endentured ser¬ 
vants—practically white slaves—in¬ 
cluding many who had been, to say 
the least, strongly urged to emigrate 
for their country’s good—a plan often 
followed in our early Colonial his¬ 
tory. 
The first settlement was made far 
down the peninsula at St. Mary’s 
City. Today St. Mary’s City is little 
more than a name and a memory. It 
is made up only of an aristocratic 
Episcopal boarding school, together 
with an ancient church set in the 
midst of an old, old cemetery. Per¬ 
haps it was because it was a lovely, 
soft, warm, hazy autumnal afternoon 
—the last day of September—but 
someway this ancient burial-place ap¬ 
pealed to me with a sense of rest and 
peace beyond any other that I can re¬ 
member. The salt water comes up 
close on two sides of it and the little 
wavelets of the bay were softly lap¬ 
ping on the sand—a mocking bird 
was sounding its note in one of the 
big cedars and all around, keeping company with 
us were the men and women who laid the founda¬ 
tions of this old State. Here, perhaps, one could 
understand the spirit of Stevenson’s lovely lines: 
“Here he lies where he longed to be, 
Home is the sailor—home from the sea, 
And the hunter home from the hill.” 
Here the State of Maryland has set up a monu¬ 
ment to Leonard Calvert, the first Governor. The 
monument stands on the site of the “great mul¬ 
berry tree, beneath which were held the sessions 
of the first Assembly of the Colony.” Here also 
are markers indicating the corners of the first 
“State House”—but men have since been buried 
where the State House stood. What a long pageant 
has been played out since these men landed here 
that spring day from The Ark and The Dove and 
began a great adventure in an unknown land. 
Leonard Calvert has other memorials. Over 
east across the broad Pautuxent lies Calvert 
County, while further north is Leonardstown, 
County seat of St. Mary’ County, and largest vil¬ 
lage of the peninsula. 
Eastern New York has a number of colonial 
churches, but in their setting and surroundings 
they are unlike the old churches of this region. 
Calvert County, which is perhaps the most remote 
and isolated region of Maryland, has four EpisJ 
copal churches, all organized in one year— 1692^ 
and each church stands absolutely in the om 
(Continued on page 426) 
